South Australia down in housing finance, according to ABS

The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has found South Australia’s housing market to still be lagging behind, particularly in January when it had the eighth successive month of decline in people seeking housing finance.

A dip of 5.9% was seen in the number of South Australians seeking housing finance compared to the same period last year, according to the Adelaide independent news website InDaily.

This differed greatly from the rise of 0.4% for housing commitments elsewhere around Australia.

The report also said participation rates in Victoria and Queensland by first home buyers were at 17%, respectively. Western Australia, meanwhile, has nearly 20% first home buyers.

This contrasted sharply with South Australia where only 4.7% were first home buyers, according to Mortgage Choice data.

The South Australian Centre for Economic Studies (SACES) said the ABS housing finance data revealed “South Australia’s total value of housing finance commitments for January 2015 increased by 0.2% (up $2m) over the previous month, valued at approximately $0.88bn in trend terms”.

“Australia wide the value of housing finance commitments nation-wide increased by 0.8% (up $133m) to $17.7bn. The total value of commitments for South Australia in January 2015 was 1.9% higher than a year earlier; by comparison Australia wide commitments were up 6.9% over the past year.”

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